Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Saturdays, I will be reviewing the Canadian sitcom, Check it Out, which ran in syndication from 1985 to 1988.  The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi!

Never hire a friend is the lesson of this week’s episode.

Episode 2.3 “Buddy, Can You Spare A Job?”

(Dir by Alan Erlich, originally aired on October 17th, 1986)

Cobb’s has got a new butcher!

Curt Farquar (Billy Van, who was a prominent horror host in Canada) not only knows how to cut meat but he’s also been Howard’s best friend since childhood.  When Curt approaches Howard and explains that his wife has left him and he desperately needs a job, there’s no way that Howard can turn him down.  Unfortunately, Curt turns out to be a bit of a bully, yelling at both the customers and his other co-workers.  He even yells at Mrs. Cobb.  Howard knows that he has to fire Curt but he doesn’t have the guts to do it.  He gets Christian to do it and then reverses course as soon as Curt confronts him.

It would be really nice if Check It Out! could decide just who exactly Howard Bannister is meant to be.  There are some episodes where Howard is a such a competent manager that other companies try to lure him away.  Then there are episodes where he is totally incompetent.  There are episodes where he and Edna are practically married and then others where they can barely stand each other.  There are episodes where Howard is a sharp-tongued leader who won’t let anyone push him around and then there are ones, like this one, where he has to be coaxed out of his office.  Sometimes, Howard is a tyrant.  Other times, he’s a wimp.  There’s never been any sort of consistency with how Howard has been portrayed and, as a result, I still don’t feel like I know the character.

That’s a problem for an episode like this one, where all of the humor centers around Howard’s inability to take an honest look at his friendship with Curt.  The Office did several good episodes that centered around Michael Scott’s toxic friendship with Todd Packer.  It was hard not to think about those episodes as I watched Howard fumble his way through Check it Out!  On The Office, Michael’s one-way friendship with Packer told the viewer everything they needed to know about Michael.  On Check It Out!, Howard’s friendship with Curt tells us nothing because the Howard who we’ve seen in previous episodes of Check It Out! would never have a friend like Curt.

For the record, Howard does eventually work up the courage to fire Curt.  And Curt actually thanks Howard for firing him because it gives Curt the time to patch up his marriage.  But first, of course, we have to sit through Curt threatening to jump off the roof of Cobb’s, just to teach Howard a lesson about …. something.  Who knows?

On the plus side, the always funny Gordon Clapp was heavily featured in this episode.  Viker convinced everyone to give him money so that he could send off for everyone’s family tree.  Viker discovered that he was descended from an axe-sharpener.  Marlene was descended from wolves.  Howard was descended from Napoleon, which of course led to Don Adams putting his hand in his suit.  And Christian …. Christian didn’t have a family tree because “your cheque bounced.”

(The closed captioning apparently understood that Check It Out! was a Canadian show.)

The Viker stuff was funny, largely because of Gordon Clapp’s ability to deliver the most absurd dialogue with a totally straight face.  The Howard/Curt stuff was kind of boring.  This was not a memorable episode to check out.